It is well established that good writing derives from writers who understand the writing process. However, while the National Curriculum of England explicitly states that teachers should incorporate important parts of the writing process, such as drafting, revising and proof-reading, in their teaching, the Swedish national curriculum does not. The aim of the study was to investigate how reflective learning affects Swedish students' writing skills in an ESL setting. More specifically, it investigates how the implementation of drafting and redrafting in a writing project affects the quality of texts as well as students’ perception of working reflectively. To be able to evaluate these variables, the students’ first and final drafts were analyzed in order to find out how much the students had improved and in which linguistic areas out of grammar, formality, cohesion and structure. The students were also asked to write a reflective text about their opinion of the writing project. The data was then categorized and later analyzed by using Kolb’s experiential learning cycle and the GLL model. The results showed an insignificant change regarding the students’ grades and quality of text. However, most students were positive about the working process. These results suggest that reflective learning could have many benefits for Swedish students’ writing skills and students seem to find the working process helpful. However, more research is needed in order to further evaluate the impact reflective learning can have on students’ writing skills.

No description available.

No description available.

While there is a consensus among researchers that assessment should and can serve learning, there is less understanding of how it supports learning at a fine-grained level. This thesis uses design-based research to investigate the role of comment-only, holistic peer assessment in writing development. The theory of action synthesises Sadler's accounts of learning through assessment (1989, 2010) with Winne and Hadwin's (1998, 2008) model of self-regulated learning. It is theorised that participating in peer assessment helps students to develop evaluative expertise, which in turn enriches task perceptions, metacognitive standards and ultimately large-scale adaptation: the changes students employ in subsequent essays. Drawing on the theory of action, I designed a series of workshops for first-year English Literature students learning to write examination essays. The thesis reports on the first of two iterations. 21 participants assessed and discussed example essays; criteria were not pre-determined but emerged from discussion of four examples. Students then wrote a timed essay, assessed three peer pieces and received three reviews. A range of data was generated during the workshops, including written comments, reflections and questionnaires. Ten case study writers also took part in pre- and post-workshops writing tasks, think-aloud protocols and interviews. To trace the development of students' evaluative expertise, I coded inductively students' talk and comment about writing. Visualising the connections between emergent codes reveals writing quality as a complex web of criteria, with the essay question at the centre. There was a strong overlap between the official Faculty assessment criteria and the codes emerging from student data. However, students also frequently commented on procedural aspects of writing such as introductions and conclusions, which are left tacit or latent in Faculty criteria. Post-workshops, students' own metacognitive standards became increasingly reader-oriented and question-focussed, and these procedural aspects of writing drove the adaptations they made to their approach. I use rich, in-depth case study data to trace how, why, and when students made such adaptations. I also examine the role of peer feedback, which rather than offering new information, often verified or complemented the judgements students formed of their own writing during the workshops. The thesis thus illuminates processes involved in learning through assessment. It also shows that peer assessment is a practicable way of developing within the discipline both evaluative expertise and writing, which are key to lifelong learning.

The aim of this study was to investigate how four third grade pupils, who are in need of extra support in their development in writing, and their teacher describe the conditions of the teaching organization when writing factual text. The empirical material consisted of transcripts of interviews with teacher and students, supported by field notes of observations and video observations. Constructively oriented interviews were conducted with an interview guide as support. The choice to carry out observations and video observation also gave an opportunity to study the teaching from different perspectives, and contributed to broader empirical material.   The results of the study show that the scaffolding that existed in the organization in various ways created opportunities for the pupils to write factual texts. Different examples of a varied and successful scaffolding in teaching are presented in the results section. The current teacher used several different artefacts in her teaching as well as collaborative activities like dialogues in full class, or between students, to support knowledge, acquisition on the subject, on subject specific concepts and on factual writing. One obstacle that emerged was that a pupil had difficulty writing the factual text despite the support that existed in the organization of the teaching.   The pupils also describe a varied support in teaching. They used different artefacts as support when they learned the facts on the subject and when writing the factual texts. According to the pupils’ statements more obstacles existed. One pupil had difficulties to write despite the support, one pupil felt that writing by hand was an obstacle, one pupil stressed that the weak interest for the subject as well as the “childish” material (the film) reduced the motivation to learn and two pupils also claimed external influences, like a noisy classroom, to be an obstacle to focusing on the writing task. / Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur fyra elever som är i behov av extra stöd i sin skrivutveckling och en lärare i årskurs 3 beskriver vilka förutsättningar som finns i undervisningen för att skriva en faktatext. Det empiriska materialet utgjordes av utskrifter från lärar- och elevintervjuer med stöd av fältanteckningar från observation och videoobservation. Konstruktivistiskt orienterade intervjuer utfördes med en intervjuguide som stöd. Valet att även genomföra observation och videoobservation gav en möjlighet att studera undervisningen utifrån olika perspektiv och bidrog till ett bredare empiriskt material.   Resultaten från studien visade att den stöttning som fanns i undervisningens organisation på många olika sätt skapade förutsättningar för eleverna att skriva en faktatext. Olika exempel på en varierad framgångsrik stöttning presenteras i resultatet. Läraren i studien använde flera olika artefakter som stöd i undervisningen och kollaborativa aktiviteter som samtal i helklass och mellan elever för att stötta kunskapsinhämtning om ämnet, ämnesbegrepp och skrivande av en faktatext. Ett hinder som framkom var att en elev hade svårt att skriva faktatexten trots stödet som fanns i undervisningens organisation.   Eleverna beskrev också ett varierat stöd i undervisningen. De använde olika artefakter som stöd när de skulle lära sig fakta om ämnet och när de skulle skriva faktatexten. Utifrån elevernas beskrivningar framkom fler hinder. En elev hade svårt att skriva trots stödet, en elev ansåg att skrivandet för hand hindrade honom, en elev tar upp att intresset för ämnet är lågt och densamme menar att materialet (filmen) är för ”barnsligt” vilka båda är faktorer som påverkar motivationen att lära och två elever lyfter även yttre påverkansfaktorer, som prat i klassrummet som ett hinder för att kunna koncentrera sig på skrivuppgiften.

The aim of this study is to investigate the meaning-making expressed by pupils in upper primary school when they work with peer response while writing an explanatory and comparative text. The questions answered through the study concern, firstly, what pupils aim their written response at when they read texts, and secondly, what experiences the pupils highlight in the work of giving and receiving peer response. The theoretical foundation on which the study rests is dialogism (Bakhtin 1952–1953/1997). The pupils’ response work is considered in terms of the significance of dialogue for learning, in which language functions as a mediating tool (Säljö 2000). In the texts analysed in the study, there is an interaction between writer and reader, and there is a dialogue that can be related to earlier texts and the conventions developed there (Ajagán-Lester, Ledin et al. 2003, Evensen 1999). The empirical material for the study comes from a class with 23 pupils in grade 5. The material consists of pupils’ written response to classmates’ texts, pupils’ written reflections and six interviews with pupils about working with peer response. The result shows that the pupils are aware that they are writing for readers and that they must therefore think about how the reader is supposed to understand the text. The response is geared above all to the purpose and readers of the text and to how the content is organized. In cases where spelling and punctuation become an obstacle to an understanding of the text, there is also response about that. Pupils appear to be able to utilize their knowledge of text to give a response to classmates’ texts and to their own texts. The pupils also say that they will retain what they have learned in this writing project in future situations when they have to write texts. The double dialogue stands out as central. Interaction is important and the conventions are used to achieve what the pupils’ appear to have in focus: the reader’s understanding of the text. Through contexts where pupils meet in dialogue about text, meaning is created. In this study pupils in upper primary school state that response work and the resulting transactions lead to a knowledge of how to write texts, and through this meaning is created.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

This is about how pupils in years 4 to 6 of compulsory school and their teachers make meaning in teaching activities and texts. The aim of the study is to investigate the teaching and learning of writing and the pupils’ discursive texts. Another aim is to use linguistic theories and develop methods and analytical concepts for studying teaching practices. Sources for the material are the teaching practices in two classes, the teachers and the pupils. The field studies lasted for two years, consisting of observations and interviews. Twelve pupils’ texts and four writing projects are studied in depth. The theoretical framework is linked to systemic functional linguis­tics, critical discourse analysis, dialogical conception of language and new literacy studies. Analytical tools are also derived from rhetorical structure theory, relief theory and theory of text sequences. These tools have been adap­ted and are also applied in the analysis of the teaching practice. To analyse pupils’ meaning making in their texts, a theory of mobility in texts is used. The analyses show two different categories of texts and teaching practices. The hierarchically composed texts are characterized by hierarchies concerning the entire text. The sequentially coupled texts are charac­terized by many vague relations between text entities. One conclusion is that the students in the hierarchically composed texts develop knowledge during writing. They make meaning recursively when writing and they seem to grasp the text as a whole in a way they do not in the sequentially coupled ones. In the sequentially coupled texts, pupils seem to develop knowledge mostly before they write the text, rather than during the writing. In the hierarchically composed practice the pupils deepen their knowledge about text. The result can be interpreted as showing that pupils primarily need education about global text levels in order to develop text knowledge and subject knowledge. Teaching practice seems to promote all pupils’ meaning making if the practice is characterized by many interpersonal relations in the chains of spoken and written texts and if pupils learn to write texts that can structure their meaning making in a functional way.